


jumping through your bones

by hallowgirl



Category: Modern Family (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Eating Disorders, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mental Illness, Not A Happy Ending, Overlaps With Canon, Sad Ending, Self-Esteem, Self-Esteem Issues, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 01:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8558122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallowgirl/pseuds/hallowgirl
Summary: "My whole life is a hunger game. Why do you think I'm so mean to you?"

When Haley is sixteen, she knows about eating disorders, but that still doesn't feel like her, somehow.
(How she feels slithers away, crawls away, curls up in the space between her bones, where skin and blood and real things should be.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, just to make it clear, this isn't trying to actually STATE that Haley has an eating disorder in the show. This was based off that one comment Haley made in one of the Season Five episodes-I think-to Alex: "My whole life is a hunger game. Why do you think I'm so mean to you?"  
> Yeah, it was just a throwaway line, but it got me thinking about Haley's whole character, particularly with other moments, such as her meltdown in the second episode of Season Six or the general way she's treated for not being as visibly "bright" as her sister. I just got to thinking about it and how that could affect someone psychologically and with that and my own experience with disordered eating when I was younger (which, I hasten to add, is not what Haley's was based on in this fic-her experiences with family, friends, relationships, etc. are different to mine) , I ended up viewing Haley through this lens, and this is what came out of it.  
> Obviously, TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDERS AND BODY IMAGE ISSUES.  
> Leave a comment if you like it! :)  
> I also take fanfic commissions on my [Tumblr](http://hallowgirl.tumblr.com/post/148008226239/fanfic-commissions) (it's a lolitics Tumblr, but I write fics for loads of different fandoms), so send me a message if you're interested. :)

_"My whole life is a hunger game. Why do you think I'm so mean to you?"_

* * *

 

When Haley is three, Daddy calls her Princess. She toddles towards him, on legs that Mommy squeezes and calls _gorgeous_ and he kisses her cheek and plays with her pigtails.

_Take me on magic car-et ride_ she says, because Mommy says she can't say _P_ properly.

Daddy scoops her up and swings her round, while Mommy pats at the bump that's going to be a baby and Daddy holds her up so she can see herself in the mirror.

_Beautiful_ , he says and Haley smiles, because Mommy and Daddy always call her beautiful and so does Grandpa, and that's good.

Daddy kisses her forehead and presses their cheeks together and Haley smiles in the mirror, and feels beautiful. If she squints, she could have a tiara on her head, a crown.

All it takes is pretending. And Haley's good at pretending.

* * *

 

When Haley is five, she can't read properly. The other kids at kindergarten can thread the letters together in patterns and words that mean things, big things, stories and Haley can't. She can't push the words together to make a story like the other kids can and so she can't, and when the teacher tells her she's not trying, Haley pushes the work away from her and scowls, because she won't try anymore if no one can see how hard she's _already_ been trying.

Mommy and the teacher have a Conversation, the type with a big letter at the start, and Haley sits outside with the baby that they called Alex, who's bigger now. Alex can make the letters come together into sentences already, and she can write too, the pen wobbling in her too-little fingers.

Alex is reading next to her, with her pigtails bouncing on her shoulders, and Haley watches for a bit, the way Alex's eyes move over the page so fast, even though Alex is really a baby and doesn't even go anywhere to school yet.

Thinking about it makes something scrunch crossly in Haley's chest and so she reaches over and knocks Alex's book out of her hands to make her stop being able to read it when Haley can't.

Alex cries and Mommy appears at the door, with her hand over the bump that's going to be a baby and that they know's going to be called Luke and Alex cries more and the teacher says with her head all creased _It's like this at home, too?_

Haley sticks out her tongue, because she's fed up of everyone being mean to her, and it's Daddy who puts her on his knee when he gets home and tells her she's beautiful again.

He tells Alex she's beautiful too, but not as often, but he tells Alex she's smart, so Haley thinks it's fair that he tells her she's beautiful the most often. She's glad the new baby will be a boy.

* * *

 

When Haley is eight, she's the first girl in her grade to start wearing make-up. Mom hates it, but Dad's started giving them pocket money and Haley spends hers' on make-up at the drug store and the 7/11.

Alex just spends hers' on books and Luke is too little to get any. Luke doesn't need any anyway, because all Luke does is run around and bash things with his head and sometimes bark at people.

Haley likes it when Mom whispers to Dad about Luke because then they don't whisper about her, and they never whisper about Alex except with smiles and big, happy eyes.

Whenever they whisper about Alex, Haley always leads her friends to the bathroom at school the next day and shows them how to put on make-up, how to slick their eyelashes perfectly, and make their mouths look bigger, and they all walk out together, their arms linked tight, and Haley knows their faces all look the same but hers' looks the best.

Their teacher gets annoyed but Haley doesn't care because whenever Mom gets called in to see Alex's teacher, it's always about Alex getting top marks in a spelling test or Alex winning the science fair or Alex going to the grade above for her math lessons, so Haley likes that when Mom gets called in to see her teacher, it's for things Haley's good at. Like putting on make-up or getting the girls to chase the boys and kiss them or pulling out the pigtails of the girl in front of her, who wears glasses like Alex and never wears make-up and gets all As on her report cards.

Haley doesn't listen when Mom tells her off because Grandpa just winks at her and tells her Mom was just as bad when she was her age, which makes Mom throw up her hands and say _Real helpful, Dad,_ but Haley doesn't listen anyway, because she's too busy telling Alex the reason no one lets her sit with them at lunch is because she's a dork, which Luke starts chanting over and over though he doesn't even know what it means, until Alex screams at them both and tells them that it's because they're morons, anyway, and that's why everyone thinks Haley might have to be held back a grade.

Mom and Dad didn't even know Alex knew, and Haley didn't even know everyone knew.

It doesn't happen, but it might have, and everyone knows that now.

Nobody at school knows though, apart from her teacher, who Haley hates now, and so she spends more and more time putting on make-up, even doing it in class sometimes, to show her that she won't be kept behind, and that she doesn't want to be here anyway, not like her dorky little sister.

She likes her dance classes, though, and she works at them, because her dance teacher always hugs her and smiles at her and tells her _good, Haley, good, keep practicing that_ , and she does, because she wants to be thrown up in the air and caught, like the skinniest girls.

Haley looks at herself in the mirror and thinks she's not quite skinny enough for that, yet, and wonders how she could get skinnier. Because everyone calls them beautiful, and she gets called beautiful, too, and she likes that, especially when everyone calls Alex smart and Luke adorable and nobody calls her smart.

* * *

 

When Haley's eleven, the older girls in her dance class sometimes let her hang around them after class. They put make-up on her, give her some of their leftovers, so she doesn't have to buy it at the drugstore anymore, and she looks at their hip bones, reflected blue in the changing room lights when they shimmy in and out of dresses that make them look like they're dancing when they're just walking.

They look beautiful, and Haley tells them.

"You're the cutest" says one of them, kissing her head, and Haley is fascinated by her bones and before she can stop herself, her fingers flutter over the girl's hip.

She stops, stunned-it's the sort of thing Alex would do, because she's the kind of little dork that doesn't know any better-but the girl laughs. "Like it?"

Haley nods and looks down at her own stomach, sticking her tongue out. She squeezes it, but it's still there, sticking out back at her, and not beautiful at all.

"Want to know a secret?"

Haley nods, eagerly-Alex always crowds round her, whining _Tell me a secret, tell me a secret,_ and Haley never tells her. Alex has her dorky books for friends, anyway.

"Two-finger upchuck."

Haley blinks and then the girl laughs and shoves both her fingers into her mouth. Haley can see her tongue, pink and glistening so much it almost looks sharp. Like it could cut.

"Down your throat after dinner. Makes you throw it back up. That way, you don't get shoved in the psych ward and you don't turn into a muffin-top. Easy."

Haley blinks and only then gets it and can't help thinking that Alex would have straight away.

It's after dinner one night when Mom's yelled at her and Alex for fighting because Alex was showing off and Haley kicked her and Alex yelled that this was probably the closest Haley ever got to having a brain cell and Haley told her that maybe she got all the beauty cells because Alex looked like a boy and Luke didn't even notice because he was too busy crawling around with a tinfoil hat on his head.

She slams the bathroom door behind her and turns the water on before she opens her mouth and tries hooking her finger in there.

It's hard and it aches and she's choking on her finger which suddenly seems so big and it hurts the back of her throat and she keeps feeling like she's choking and isn't that the point-

It takes a few goes but her stomach suddenly lurches and twists and she throws up sour liquid, that makes her mouth taste vile and her chest aches like a protest, but it works. It works and when she's done and flushed and scrubbed her teeth with her toothbrush three times, she looks into the mirror and smiles a little shakily.

Two weeks later, she's made herself throw up six times and then she lets Jackson Kaner kiss her in the garage at a pool party. It's sloppy and Haley doesn't think she likes it but it means he thinks she's beautiful and that makes it worth it. She lets her friends tease her about it when she comes out afterwards and watches the envy flickering behind their smiles, the slight flinch when they see how skinny she looks in her bikini that she bought without Mom knowing, and she loves, hard and tight in her chest, that here everyone looks at her.

* * *

 

 When Haley's thirteen, the throwing up's become second nature.

She does it every other night at least, sometimes more. These days, Alex has started at her middle school and all the teachers are already staring at her like there's something wrong with her just because she doesn't want to hang around every day in the library like her nerdy little sister, and so at home, she feels less and less like sitting at the table with Mom and Dad and listening to Alex recite whatever she's reading at the moment or Luke blowing bubbles into his orange juice.

She starts staying at the mall later and later and now she's finally got her own cell, she can just call Mom and Dad and tell them she ate at the food court, which isn't _technically_ a lie-she might have taken a few bites of an apple or a few gulps of a latte. Or she can go to one of her friends' houses and if their parents even care when their kids eat, she can just say she already ate at home.

She's started buying her own clothes by now, because Mom's hopeless and would probably be more at home in Luke's clothes than hers' (though she seems to be more at home in yelling at Haley and fussing over Alex and chasing Luke to wherever he's supposed to be) so it's easy to hide when she drops a whole size, even when she leaps into the air off the scales and gives herself a grin in the mirror, though it's not like there's anyone she can celebrate with. Her family don't know and she can tell her friends' she's lost weight but she can't tell them the number because she can't count on one of them not totally freaking out or getting so jealous they flip and tell a teacher. None of them get that Haley has to be skinnier than they do-they've all got other stuff to fall back on. Haley's only got being pretty, and if she screws that up-

Well. There's pretty much nothing.

She thinks Alex of all people might have noticed-when they're getting ready for bed (and the fact she still has to share a room with Alex totally _sucks_ , especially when Luke's had his own since he was a _baby-_ Alex says it's gender discrimination, Haley just knows the whole thing reeks of Luke being Mom's favourite) Alex sometimes stares at her and once, she props herself up on her elbow in bed, stares at Haley like she's one of those math problems Alex loves solving and says "How much do you weigh?"

Like it's a _normal question_ , and there's no way Haley's telling her the truth so instead, she says "What kind of freak question is that?"

Alex shrugs. "You kind of look your bones are poking through your skin."

Haley rolls her eyes and says that that's what being in shape looks like and Alex just wouldn't recognize it because she never sees it when she looks in the mirror. Alex says something about subjectivity which Haley doesn't get and doesn't care about anyway.

(She made up her mind about that a long time ago; that she doesn't care about the things she doesn't get. It works for other things, too, like when there's a boy pushing his tongue into her mouth and she closes her eyes and imagines she's somewhere else, with sand between her toes, somewhere else, where her skin is soft and smooth and not creased under his fingers, his grabby, grubby fingers crushing her breasts and hurting while he pushes his tongue further into her mouth and whispers how hot she is, which is the only reason she lets him do it at all.)

(How she feels slithers away, crawls away, curls up and hides in the space between her bones, where skin and blood and real things should be.)

When Alex is asleep, Haley gets up and locks herself in the bathroom and does ten star jumps and ten jumping jacks quickly, just to be on the safe side.

(How she feels jumping away, jumping through her bones into _skinnier, skinnier, skinnier.)_

At school, she's dizzy and tired, but she can't do the work anyway, so it doesn't matter. There's no point in trying if it makes no difference, so she might as well not, and anyway, it's more time to plan out how to get away with throwing her lunch away when no one can see and how to manage to eat only a few mouthfuls if she absolutely has to eat dinner at home.

The hunger is bad sometimes, gnawing and gnawing in her stomach, and it makes her meaner and sharper, which is how she gets through it. She clings onto it, lets it deepen inside her and sharpen her words, and tells herself that she feels empty anyway, she might as well feel it literally too.

(Alex would probably tell her she's using the word wrong, but she doesn't care.)

She just has to cling onto the times she's given in and taken too many crisps at one of Grandpa's Jay's Nights or been so starvingly hungry she stuffed down two muffins at the Christmas fair and afterwards she'd nearly thrown herself over the toilet and shoved her finger down her throat and even when it had come out, sour and puking and retching, burning her throat, tears spurting out of her eyes, it hadn't been enough, because she could _feel it inside her,_ she could _feel it soaking into her cells, making her fat_ , and she'd dug her fingers into her cheeks, tears pouring down hot and salty over them because she could feel it inside her making her fat, and she couldn't stop it, and she'd dug her fingers in deeper and deeper, wanting to rip and rip the skin off her face.

(She'd covered the marks with foundation, afterwards. She'd wiped her face and flushed the toilet and cleaned her teeth three times and reapplied her make up and smiled in the mirror, even as her chest rose and fell and her cheeks stung, marks that faded safely under the mask of powder and colour and gloss.

When Dad catches sight of her downstairs, he tells her "There's our beautiful girl!" with a grin, while he wrestles Luke over his shoulder and Haley just smiles, throat still aching, blood tingling across the roof of her mouth where her fingers have dragged it open as they dragged the fat out of her.)

* * *

 

When Haley is sixteen, she knows about eating disorders but that still doesn't _feel_ like her, somehow.

If she told any of her friends about this-God, if she told Mom or Alex or even Dylan-they'd all shriek and panic and drag her to a doctor and force food and calories and fat, fat, fat down her throat, until she wasn't skinny anymore, and all she was was fat and stupid and she wouldn't even have skinny anymore, she wouldn't even have that-

(The fact Dylan doesn't notice much makes him an ideal boyfriend, in some ways. He always tells her she's beautiful, too, which is another way he's ideal, though Haley can never see it.)

But it doesn't feel like anorexia or bulimia or whatever health-class name they'd slap on it, because it's just the way things _are._ She wakes up thinking about how to skip most of breakfast and she doesn't eat lunch and at dinner, she navigates around it. Alex might be smart, but she's not the only one.

At school, the only way Haley can keep awake in lessons is to text her friends-she'd probably conk out otherwise and then Mom'd get called and knowing Mom, she'd freak the second the doctor lifted up Haley's shirt and showed her every one of the ribs that Haley's worked hard to get to see.

She can never see it-that's the problem. Or she can count every one of her ribs, and she can see her eyes peeking out at her, bigger than ever, above her cheekbones. She can see it, but she can't, because then she'll see that extra inch around her waist, that little extra bit she still has to lose.

She keeps tapping her foot when she sits and she tries to walk as often as she can-one of the reasons she needs her own car is so she can ditch it sometimes and walk the blocks to Dylan's house or to a party. Every time she sneaks out, she tries to count in her head how many calories she's burning as she wriggles over the roof, though she knows it's nowhere near enough.

A couple of times, when she's walking home with Dylan, she loses her balance and he has to catch her as she falls against him. He always gives her his arm, which is nice of him, but she's always terrified that this will be the time he notices, this will be the time he feels her bones through her blouse, that it will sink into even Dylan, lovable, loyal, always-a-step-behind-everyone Dylan how skinny she is, and even though she wants them to see, she doesn't want them to _see-_

But he never does and she can always pretend it's her heels or whatever shots they've all done at the party and it's easier because this is who Dylan expects her to be.

(Everyone expects her to be, really.)

When she reads Alex's middle-school graduation speech, she could kill her, because Alex doesn't know how easy she has it. She doesn't have to worry about college because she's too tired and empty to stay awake in class, and she doesn't have to worry about pool parties because she doesn't go to any and she doesn't have to worry about how much she eats because Alex doesn't care how she looks and Haley doesn't _know_ how she does that.

She snaps the words out at her, slaps her speech cards back into her chest and storms off, with tears pricking in her eyes, hot and stinging and she wishes she could find a trashcan and just stick a finger down her throat and throw up those few bites of pancakes she shouldn't have eaten at breakfast.

(When Alex gives the speech she eventually chooses to, Haley nearly cries and she doesn't know if it's because she's happy or sad.)

(Afterwards, she says she's hungry for some stupid reason and because her entire freaking family's there and she doesn't want some lecture from Manny on how women shouldn't feel like they have to fit into pat-iarchal roles or something, and she has to eat it, and every mouthful is like hell.)

(The second she gets home, she locks herself in the bathroom and pretends she's trying out new make-up and makes herself throw up for fifteen minutes straight, but she can still feel it inside her, and it's disgusting and she smacks her forehead over and over again because she can't believe how stupid she was.)

(But she's always stupid and if she can't even be pretty then what the fuck's the point of her?)

* * *

 

When Haley's eighteen, she gets chucked out of college.

She doesn't bother to explain that the reason the world swayed and tilted and went black around her was nothing to do with the alcohol and everything to do with the fact she'd only had a Ryvita all day. The alcohol slides in as something convenient, and though college is easier for bathroom runs when she's eaten too many nachos and for it slipping out of people's eyes when she manages to skip all three meals and falls into bed hunger aching and empty and deep and sick in her stomach but her chest hollow with ribs and _I did it, I did it, I'm getting skinnier,_ she's already thinking too much about how to handle it at home, when Mom will be watching her like a hawk for the next three weeks, at least.

(College was easier for hooking up, too; alcohol could slap her skull into dizziness and giddy laughter so she didn't have to feel the guy's hands under her shirt, tracing her ribs. Or she could feel her ribs instead, singing their way through her skin while he pushed himself back and forth inside her, and she could think about that while he panted and groaned into her neck and eventually, he'd say the words _You're so hot_ or _You're gorgeous,_ breathed into her skin, the only words she was waiting to hear and that she did any of this for in the first place.)

A part of her waits for someone to notice, really. She waits for Mom to pick up on the fact she sleeps so much (she's tired all the time and she's pretty sure it's something to do with not eating, she doesn't need Alex to tell her that, and when she doesn't want to think about food and her stomach's aching with hunger and with heaving and choking and throwing up whatever's managed to crawl into it, sleep's something to sink into that makes it all stop, at least for a while) or for Dad to offer her a stack of pancakes. She even wants him to say to her, _Honey, you're gorgeous. You don't need to worry about your figure. Girl?_ like he's trying to feel his way through how they speak.

But she's perfected hiding it, over the years, and now they don't peer closer at all, because they've learnt she won't let them see anyway, even when she dates guys closer to their age than hers', partly because she's wondering if all adults are this blind or if that's just a kid thing to think and a part of her wonders if she's still a kid anyway.

She likes photography, because it captures everything else. She can grab hold of her sister, folding the words of a book around herself, or her brother, his face coated in shaving foam for the first time and hold onto them, like they're hers', like she created them, or this little piece of them, this little piece that she gets to keep.

She only has to have one picture of herself, and her body's hidden by the camera.

She likes photography, because she gets to capture everything else, while everything else captures her.

* * *

 

When Haley is twenty-one, she should really have stopped hoping someone's going to notice because no one ever has.

(A part of her is actually glad when Alex ends up in therapy. Glad, and a sick little part of her's kind of jealous, because at least everyone _knows_ Alex has problems. It's like going to therapy's plastered ISSUES on her forehead and everyone's tiptoeing around her the way they're supposed to, while Haley's throat aches from her fingers probing it, and her stomach is always shaky and she's used to nearly falling now when she walks.)

(It's even sicker that the first thing that seizes her when Manny tells her _I used to have a crush on you. I don't anymore_ , is panic, cold and nauseating, that grabs her stomach and squeezes tightly, her heart throwing itself against her ribs like it wants to escape, while her mind zooms outside her body and skitters over herself, looking for any sign that she's changed, where she's _failed_ , become _less_ , because why, she'd always known this was there, that people would look at her, because why else was she doing this, why else-)

It's weird, because Haley always figured she wanted people to look at her but she didn't want them to look at _this._ But when they do-like when she's trying on one of Gloria's dresses and Gloria squints at her, eyes skittering over Haley's ribs the way she does when she's trying to make sense of an English verb or sentence, or when the dentist points out that the enamel on her teeth seems pretty worn down, or when Alex says something about the hunger games and Haley hasn't eaten all day, and the words seem to jab through her skin, jab accusingly at her bones, or when Mom points out that she sleeps half the day and _when exactly are you going to do something with your life?-_

(She can't let them see they're right, because otherwise they'd stop her.)

(They'd stop her, and she doesn't know what she'd do without it, because this is what life is, breakfast, lunch and dinner, how many crumbs she can get away with leaving on a plate, how to move when it feels like the world is tilting around you, whether today will be the day your bones sharpen and whiten and stab, stab carefully and neatly and beautifully all the way through your skin.)

So she laughs and tells Gloria that she looks like a ten-year-old boy next to her and the dentist that it's just too much partying, too much alcohol, too many ordinary twenty-something problems and just flips the pages of a magazine and tells Alex the truth so she won't believe it- _My whole life is a hunger games, why do you think I'm so mean to you?_ -and tells Mom to get off her case, she's got her blog, and that's more than Mom had at her age.

(On her blog, everyone tells her she's beautiful and she eats the comments up like she's starving for them, and the spike of the letters fits her throat better than food.)

Of course Andy has a girlfriend and of course she's not good enough for him. He's like the prince her dad used to read her stories about, the one who can ride in and see when the princess is keeping secrets and take them all on himself, and carry her into the sunset, away from them.

(When Dad tells her, standing in that stupid college's Psychology department, Haley cries because she wants to tell him that it's not that, it's not any of it, it's that she doesn't know when this will be enough anymore, but Luke's there and Alex is looking at colleges and it's Alex's day, it's always Alex's day, and there's too much, too many words that would pile up between them now, like her bones with too little around them.)

(So she lets him hug her and slams her hand on a button with theirs' and pretends to be better.)

She thinks Andy sees through it and maybe she wants him to, but she can't tell him. She can't tell him even when his brow furrows as he asks _Is that all you're having?_ when she just orders a coffee while they wait for the freaking wedding to start and later when she only takes one bite of that doughnut when they're out together and says he can have the rest-

(When she gets home, she sticks her fingers down her throat and afterwards black patches appear in front of her eyes and she has to lean against the bathroom wall while she waits for the world to stop tilting and when she collapses into bed, she sleeps for so long that when she finally wakes up, her entire family is freaking out)

(which is exactly why telling them about this would do nothing, because they'd just freak out even more, because she loves her family, she does, but sometimes they're just too much, even when Gloria storms into an office to apologise for her, and Haley wonders and wishes what Gloria would do if she knew)

(but then Mom would know and she'd have to go to a doctor, and she wouldn't be able to do it. She wouldn't be able to do it)

-and a few years ago, Haley might have thought this was it, the end of the story, when they got together. That they'd fall in love and get a house and he'd notice, notice that she didn't eat, that she was dizzy all the time, and that one night, he'd sit her down and take her hand and tell her he knew, he knew she was sick, and it was all OK, and she'd break down and tell him everything.

And they'd go to a doctor and get her fixed and she'd be able to eat and like eating again and it wouldn't matter about seeing her bones because he would have thought she was beautiful anyway.

That's what Haley had probably thought, once upon a time, would happen, the same way she'd probably once thought she could stop this any time she wanted.

But that's the thing. A few years ago, she might have thought this was it, where it stopped, but back then, she'd have thought that was what she wanted.

* * *

 

When Haley is twenty-three, life is good, or seems to be.

She has a boyfriend. She has a job. She has her family.

She still goes to parties and people still call her beautiful and her dad still calls her his little girl when he wants, and even Alex tells her she's gorgeous in those times when they can lie on each other's beds and just talk which she wouldn't have thought could happen once.

She looks at herself in the mirror and smiles, eyes big and bright and beautiful, the way Dad called them once, and it makes Haley laugh a little, the way she thought big was beautiful then.

It seems good, or good enough, good enough to get better.

And each time someone calls her beautiful, she still hangs onto it, with her fingers digging in and drawing blood, like it might get ripped away from her.

And each time she takes a bite of chocolate, she has to hold herself still so she doesn't scream and when she's alone and stares at herself in the mirror, she can still feel it inside her, growing and growing and making her fatter and fatter, until she wants to peel off her skin and step out of it, rip it off her body so she can get out, away from the weight and the ugliness and how it's never going to be good enough.

And each night before she goes to bed, she does what she's done three times a day, seven times a week for however many weeks it's been now, however many weeks or months or years it's been since she started this back when she thought that one day she'd want to stop, and puts her finger down her throat, which lets out a dull little shriek of pain and vomits sourness and food and ugliness out of her mouth and out of her and feels her body contract and tremble and heave it out of her, as though it's fighting every inch of it.

Back then, she thought she'd want to stop.

And then she flushes and cleans her teeth three times and puts on perfume and rubs in lotion and chews a breath mint and smiles and heads down the landing, the music still playing loudly so that all Andy will hear are their favourite lyrics, where he's waiting for her.

"Are you all right?" he asks and Haley smiles, smiles big, the way Daddy used to say was beautiful, and says "Yeah."

Because she can be all right, for Andy and everyone else, and as long as she can do that for them, then she doesn't have to stop for her.

Haley's good at pretending.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment if you liked it. :)


End file.
